Hasn't Science Disproved Everything Christians Believe?

I love science. It has been the door to wondrous and amazing things... the cell, the human genome, the atom, subatomic particles, galaxies, nebulae and medicine just to name a few. I have made my living as a scientist first as a research chemist for Pfizer (Viagra) then Glaxo (Zantac) and then my own start up company, Sarco. I love science and the systematic method it offers for getting at the truth in an objective way. My love for science has not been a problem for my faith. In fact it has been an asset to it.

Science offers us a way of testing, gathering data and evaluating that data in order to reach conclusions. This is exactly what is needed when it comes to choosing between all the spiritual options we have. How can we know if anyone of them is reasonable or makes sense? Can any of these faith paths really offer us hope? I believe one can and does offer us the evidence and data that objective people can evaluate. Christianity held up to the scrutiny that I brought to bear on it.

For me and many others it was the evidence for the resurrection that made the biggest difference. Christianity has it roots in this single event, and on this it either stands or falls. Once I stood back and removed my biases, the evidence was overwhelming, and then faith just seemed reasonable. I am not alone. Simon Geenleaf was a Jewish Scholar who built the Harvard Law School into the dominate force it is today. He literally wrote the book about the laws of evidence. He was challenged by some of his students to examine the evidence for the resurrection. He approached it skeptically, but after a thorough investigation he became a believer in Jesus Christ. His story can be repeated over and over. A desire for truth, followed up by serious objective and unbiased research leads to faith.

Today more than ever it is reasonable to believe. The advances of Science in the areas of genetics and physics point strongly toward God. As Patrick Glynn (Former Atheist) has said, "As recently as twenty-five years ago a reasonable person weighing the purely scientific evidence on the issue would likely come down on the side of skepticism. That is no longer the case. Today the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis. It is the simplest and most obvious solution."

In fact, Dean Kenyon, a biophysicist from San Francisco State University coauthored a book explaining the emergence of life apart form God. Later when faced with the advances in molecular genetics he repudiated the conclusions of his own book. He said, “This new realm of molecular genetics is where we see the most compelling evidence for design (creation).” Science is not anti-faith, in fact the work of the Human Genome Project that Dean Kenyon referred to in the quote was led by Francis Collins, a Christian. The anti-faith issues associated with science are really unjustified and in my experience perpetrated by a small number of zealous anti-religious individuals with and anti-God bias. They are not know for objectivity.

My challenge is check it our for yourself. Do the research, keep an open mind. Truth has nothing to fear, it will still be the truth and you may just discover a door to a wondrous and amazing new way of life.

Share your thoughts,

Mike




If you are interested in learning more on this subject check out this podcast.

How can there be good God and suffering at the same time?

Suffering is so universal, everyone experiences it. No one escapes it because everyone must go through the trauma of birth and the heartache of death. And then if our lives go beyond just these two experiences we are faced with a host of others that pierce us to the core... rejection, loss, sickness, betrayal, abandonment, divorce, etc.. These are just some of the personal experiences we might have with it, but what about the other forms of suffering that effects so many in the world as well... famine, disease, genocide, war? Sorry, I am not trying to get you to slit your wrists but simply point out that suffering is a real profound issue for everyone. Is it any wonder that many have concluded that God must not exist in a world so dramatically marked by suffering?

I believe the Bible has answers, and in fact the Bible tells us that what we do see is what we would expect to see. If the Bible is right, and it sure seems to match up with reality, then we should see death, disease, war and cruelty of all kinds. If there really was a "fall" and sin entered and tainted all of us with things like pride and selfishness and corrupted nature with a curse, then what we would expect to see is exactly what we find. This is one of the great things about the Bible...it matches reality. The Bible warns us to expect suffering and that is what we see.

This may seem like a cruel way of saying "I told you so," but that is not the way I mean it. Many think that God and suffering are incompatible...but the Bible does not have a problem with them...in fact it teaches that God so values every person's freewill that God allows us to make a mess of things. Plus, if God intervened and fixed it all and thus ended suffering it would undermine our ability to see the real problem...we need to be remade and restored by Jesus. If there were no consequences for our mistakes or no obvious problems with the world we would never be motivated to come to God and ask for help. In a sense we would getting a clean bill of health when we really needed emergency surgery for a life threatening aneurysm. Suffering then is the scratch that needs to be itched...it is what shows us that there is a deep seated problem in the world and it is here to help lead us to God.

So suffering actually ends up being a bigger problem for those who do not believe in God then for those who do. This is because without God they cannot explain the sense of injustice they feel about suffering. If there is no God then there is only "survival of the fittest" and "might makes right." Injustice would be the accepted norm all over the world rather than being so rejected by it. Why do we all instinctively have the opposite reaction about it? Instead of embracing suffering as the normal course of things, we reject it and know that this is not the way things should be. Where does that knowledge and sense of morality come from? This question then leads us right back to... God!

What do you think,

Mike





If you are interested in learning more on this subject check out this podcast.

How can anyone trust the Bible?

It is amazing how we are so divided on the Bible. For some the Bible is all that and a bag of chips and for others it is the strangest book ever written. It is still by far the best selling book of all time. Yet it creates immense controversy.

I admit to having my struggles with the Bible. I have wondered how it could really be true and accurate, how it could be God's Word, or how it still could be God's Word after all these years with so many people messing with it. I think, or at least I hope this is normal behavior, that thinking people do not just willy nilly jump in and and say, "This book is God's Word." I would hope everyone would see the seriousness of such a claim and see the need for validating the claims the Bible makes. After all every religious book makes claims for itself.

One of the things that has help me was getting an accurate time perspective on the New Testament. So many seem to believe that the history of these books is like the game of "telephone," the game where one person whispers a message into a person's ear, and they whisper it to the next, and by the time it gets to the last person the message is gibberish. There seems to be an urban legend that the Bible is some how like this. "It is all these oral traditions handed down through generations and written down much later." My research showed me that this idea is as far from reality as possible. These books were written only 20-60 years after Jesus! They are eye-witness testimonies written during the lifetimes of those claiming to be there. This shattered any concept of it being myth or legend. Plus the thousands of manuscripts we have of parts of the New Testament verify not only how old the originals were, but also that these written records were actually not tampered with later on (After we get rid of variations among the manuscripts that are typos, word order issues and such there are only truly 40 or so variations among the thousands of texts that we have from the first few centuries and these minor variants do not affect any of our Christian beliefs. If tampering took place like some believe the number of true variants would have increased over time and been of significant effect. Sorry, no conspiracy to change the Bible here!).

This means the books of the New Testament were written in an atmosphere where people could hold the writers accountable. The people who were there could say, "Hold it, that's not true! I was there and Jesus did not claim to be God, He did not do miracles, did not raise from the dead." Paul tells us that 500 people saw Jesus at just one of His appearance after He was raised from the dead (1Corinthians 15:6). I find it inconceivable that they could write this stuff about Jesus and have this new system of belief explode in popularity like it did at the location of the events in question in an atmosphere where so many people could simply say it was all a lie. The only reasonable conclusion I have that fits the evidence is that thousands of people saw these things happen and were so passionate about preserving and communicating these wonderful things that they wrote them down right a way. How else can we explain the rise of Christianity?

This then changes the question. Not can I believe the Bible, but am I willing to believe the thousands of people who saw it happen and preserved the story so I could hear it? What is it about these eye witnesses that I tended to disbelieve them while I so readily believed many others? I believed the Titanic sank and that was even before we had under water footage showing us it was there. Why? People said it did...eye witness shared there stories. I believed Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs. I believed George Washington was the first President of the United States, and yet I was not there or at any other event in history that happened before my time. I realized that I was being biased and discriminating against the witnesses that brought me the Bible. I was not being consistant and objective. And this was not even taking into account other convincing issues that validate the Bible like fulfilled prophecy, the unique message, the cohesivness, historical accuracy, or the difference it made in so many lives. By the time I considered it all, I was overwhelmed with one conclusion, this book is the real deal!

Share your thoughts,

Mike





If you are interested in learning more about this subject check out this podcast.

Christianity seems so restrictive, isn’t it all about rules?

I have had people tell me, "Christians are boring, they can't do anything fun!" Others have told me that they have "tried Christianity" but it just wasn't "their thing." There seems to be this general perception that being a Christian is an absolutely miserable state of being because of all the rules. "Do this!" "Don't do that!" And for those who have actually given it a whirl they found it unsatisfying to have to keep all the rules but also give up all the things that they used to enjoy. So many eventually bail saying, "I gave it shot, but it just wasn't for me." I can relate! If I had come at Christianity from that direction my response would have been much the same.

The great thing is that Jesus, did not want us to come to Him or His Father by keeping rules. If that would have been possible He would have commended the Pharisees of his day for doing such a great job, but He did not. Just the opposite is the case, He said, "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:20) It is impossible to get to God by keeping rules! The Bible tells us that was never the purpose of all the rules. The purpose for all the rules was actually to show us that we always would fall short of perfection and deserving God's favor. This is because His favor can never be earned. It is instead given (and given undeservedly) to us through Jesus (Galatians 3:19).

Then, after we experience Jesus, an amazing thing begins to happen, He changes our hearts. The Bible says He "writes His law on our hearts." What we were unable to do or even truly want to do before (obey the rules) we now begin to do. We begin to obey not because of some rigid sense of legalism but because we now genuinely want to and enjoy doing so. He tells us that when we come to Him it is not a burdensome thing but a liberating thing. Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

If we try to approach God through rules we experience inevitable frustration, but if we approach Him through Jesus we find liberation. He said, "If you hold to my teaching (Coming to God through me and not rules), you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31-32) Christianity is not about rules, it is about Jesus! He sets us free and changes our hearts so we can begin to behave more and more like Him.


Please share your thoughts,

Mike





If you are interested in learning more on this subject check out this podcast.